SteelWatch

Nippon Steel and hydrogen: Why Super COURSE50 is the wrong path for climate action

With its “Super COURSE50” technology brand, Nippon Steel claims to use hydrogen injection and carbon capture to reduce climate-harming emissions from its steel plants. 

However, for all its green promises and elaborate branding, the company is backing a plan that is fundamentally misaligned with what the climate needs and will result in decades of continued carbon pollution from coal burning. Nippon Steel is choosing to use hydrogen to continue steelmaking with coal. 

There is a better pathway Nippon Steel could take for a future without coal. It does include hydrogen, but it would be green hydrogen, used for direct reduced iron production, so that coal-burning blast furnaces are retired.

Read the full brief in English and Japanese.

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